


Limited Scope

by Poemsingreenink



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Pirates, xena levels of historical accuracy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-01-01 03:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18328094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poemsingreenink/pseuds/Poemsingreenink
Summary: Billy had an unusual childhood, but he had an unusual adult life so it all evens out.





	1. Chapter 1

By the time he was five, the wealth of stories Billy had about his mother, Bit-na, could pass the long hours in a dozen months, of a dozen winters with plenty of time for meals and sleep included. If he sat down, and started talking what Billy knew about his mother could rival Goodnight’s cash of tales on his best and clearest days.

“Your mother was as dangerous as a shark. The first into a fight. She got half her teeth busted out by a man’s fist, but she cut the fucker’s ears right off.”

“You gave your mother terrible heartburn, but she was still so excited to see her rounding belly!”

“In the middle of a storm your mother climbed the mast to drag the new lookout to safety. Laughing the whole time!”

“Your mother had six tattoos, and swore the seventh would be your name…or a mermaid. She couldn’t decide.”

Your mother, your mother, your mother….she was Billy’s favorite story.

But by the time that he was five, Billy only has three small scraps of information about his father. A collection of details so dry and mater of fact they could have crumbled in his hands like clumps of salt.

His father was a pirate. Like his mother was a pirate.

His father was murdered the night Billy was born.

It was his mother’s beloved, Yeo-reum, that had done it, and dumped his body into the sea.

It wasn’t very much, and he didn’t think to ask for more until he grew older.

 

****

“Did my father hurt my mother? And that’s why you killed him?”

By the time Billy was eight he could swab the deck, catch fish in his bare hands, chart a path through the sea with only the stars for help, and be trusted to cook an entire pot of rice without burning it. He figured he’d accomplished enough to ask about his father.

He was holding the throwing knife incorrectly, and Yeo-reum didn’t answer until she’d adjusted his grip.

“No. Your mother had her dalliances, and so did I. We never minded so it was never a betrayal. She knew who was important, and so did I. Your father was an attractive man with a good sword arm.”

He mulled this over, throwing the knife and only hitting the edge of the target before replying. “Then why did you kill him?”

Yeo-reum’s hair was long, and braided down her back. It fell over her shoulder when she bent her head to examine the angle of Billy’s arm, and the black strands tickled him. “I was mad with grief. Your mother bled out in my arms after having you, and he was the one who got her pregnant. I needed someone to blame, and I so blamed him. Who else was there? Your mother? Sal, the midwife? Myself? _You_? No.”

His next throw landed closer to the target, but it was still frustratingly far from the center. “Do you regret it?”

Yeo-reum picked up Billy’s remaining knife and flipped it in her hand. Faster and faster until the blade was a whirl of silver against the blue sky, and then quick as a hawk on a fish she threw. It sank deep into the white painted center with a thump.

“Not really. Collect your knives and try again.”

 

****

That old conversation floated to the surface of his thoughts one night. It was cold, and he and Goody were curled together like barn cats in their tent. Goodnight had his face pressed into Billy’s side which meant he’d probably drooled on him, but that was okay. It wasn’t the cleanest shirt to begin with, and both their clothes and bodies were in desperate need of a wash.

Awake with nothing but the winter wind, and the old memory to keep him company he wondered if he would have acted the same in Yeo-reum’s place. If Goody dead would fill him with enough grief and rage that he would kill his child’s other blood parent. He can’t make the comparison work. The stories don’t fit neatly atop one another. Too many pieces have to be changed in order for him to understand. He’s never been a woman. Never had children act as the ultimate gamble for his body. Something that could end him while also keeping a part of him alive in the world. Childbirth will never be a danger to Goodnight or himself. In the end he still didn’t understand, but he also couldn’t blame Yeo-reum’s for her actions. Not after he'd been in love himself. Not after she’d raised him, and cared for him, and chanted ‘your mother, your mother, your mother’ into his ear every night like a prayer.

Especially because Billy had always thought of _her_ as his mother, but he was smart enough to know this admission would hurt her badly. So he never said it aloud.

 

****

Nine months after the Battle for Rose Creek Emma Cullen did not bleed out in Billy’s arms after giving birth, but she was losing water fast she was crying so hard. Whether it was because of the pain or because the infant, a red haired little girl with lungs that matched her mama’s, was clearly Billy’s and not Mathew’s, Billy was kind enough not to ask.

“No need to baptize her so soon. At least not with tears. Let me take her for just a second, honey.”

Leni traded Billy his daughter for a ladle and fresh water, and practically shoved him out of the birthing room.  Over the drum of rain on the roof, Billy could hear her through the door. She spoke soothingly to Emma while she encouraged her to drink while Billy was left with the product of his and Emma’s pre-battle tumble through the hay.

The baby was no longer crying, but she was sticking her tongue out, and staring at him with his own dark brown eyes.  There was blood decorating her golden skin, and for one hysterical moment Billy wondered if Leni expected him to give his daughter a bath. He has no idea how to give an infant a bath, and the only person who’d be able to instruct him was busy helping the person who’d done all the actual work.

Goodnight might have been some help, but he was outback boiling water, and even Billy knew not to take something so fragile into a freezing March rainstorm.

He had no name for this small new person he’d help make. Just a terrible rush of feelings that was so all encompassing he had a hard time splicing them apart.

Billy started to walk, making slow, lazy circles around the main room of the farm house. His bad should complained at the angle, but he ignored it, and bent his mouth so it was closer to the baby’s tiny ear.

“Your mother is a lion, but even a lion needs a second to rest. Don’t worry. You’ll see her again soon. Your mother killed bad men from the top of a saloon for the sin of destroying her world. She’ll be a good mother to have when you need to face the uglier parts of the world. Your mother is my friend even if she does cheat at cards. Your mother reminds me of both of my mothers, and I’ll introduce you to one of them someday. Your mother will be a wonderful mother, but just so you know. I am your father, and I’m not going anywhere.”


	2. Chapter 2

The first meeting between Bit-na and Yeo-reum was a story within a story. Or at least it was when Yeo-reum told it.

 

“You were the worst baby in the world. Cried for hours and hours, night after night. At least half the crew wanted you drowned like a kitten just so they could get an hour of rest. I used to walk you around the deck when the sea was calm, rubbing your little back and talking to you about your mother. I always ended the night with your mother’s seduction of me. It was your favorite story.”

 

At seven Billy couldn’t confirm this. For as long as he could remember he’d preferred the story where his mother stole the flag right off the mast of a high ranking French navel ship, but he didn’t dislike any of Yeo-reum’s stories so he never stopped to corrected her. Maybe as a baby this had been his favorite story.

 

“‘I was a fisherman’s wife,’. This is how I’d start the story you understand, and usually by this point you’d cried yourself into exhaustion so it was almost like you were actually listening to the words and not just the soothing sound of my voice. ‘I’d started life a a fisherman’s daughter so it made a certain sense. It wasn’t a bad life. My husband wasn’t a bad man, my mother wasn’t a bad woman, and my three brothers were passable human beings. I was a respectable citizen once if you can believe that.”

 

Here Yeo-reum would always grin, showing off her three gold teeth, and Billy would give an exaggerated scoff. She’d playfully cuff him around the ear, and then keep going. 

 

“Your mother was already in this life, but the ship she’d attached herself to went and got itself captured by the Emperor’s navy. When they boarded, she jumped off with nothing but her sword and the clothes on her back. I was mending nets on the beach when she came crawling and sputtering out of the waves. Half drowned, and mad as cat piss. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

 

There are no drawings of Bit-na. The only pictures Billy had of her were painted by Yeo-reum’s words, but they were more than enough.

 

“I abandoned my work, and ran to her. I thought she needed me to help her travel further inland. What I didn’t know was that I’d be following your mother right back into those waves.”

 

****

 

“You say she’s crying a lot?”

 

Leni handed Billy and Goodnight a potato and a carrot each, and set them to work on the dinner meal while she talked. She held the cutting knife differently than the throwing knife Billy’d put in her hand right before the Rose Creek battle. When he’d still been fuming, and she’d unhappily asked him the quickest way to get a man to bleed to death. Just in case.

 

“Everyday.”

 

Through the farm house window Billy could see Emma where she was sitting in the grass, back ramrod straight, and hair loose around her shoulders. Leni’s daughter, Helen, sat next to her, happily picking dandelions as Emma fed the baby.

 

“She tell you why?”

 

Leni pushed her pile of cut carrot into the center of the table, and nodded approvingly when Billy added his own. She looked at Goody’s hunks of potato with a raised eyebrow.

 

“Different days, different reasons. Yesterday, it was because Hermia will never be this small again. Today, it was because a button on Billy’s shirt popped off, and she didn’t have one to replace it. I tried to tell her we’d just use one of mine, but that didn’t help either!”

 

Billy slid all of Goodnight’s potato pieces over, and recut them into actual cubes instead of whatever shape Goody had gotten them into. 

 

“I wish I could say I was surprised. Some women feel the changes in their body harder then others after a baby is born. I was hoping Emma would be exempt from this. It’s not as though the last few years has been especially kind to her.”

 

Out on the grass the wind moved Emma’s hair across her shoulders. The shining strands that had made Billy feel like he’d been holding live fire nine months ago were dirty and limp. It was thinner too. Hunks of it at fallen out while she’d been pregnant, and while she’d done nothing more than glare at it when her belly had been round these days it was another thing to cry about. 

 

“Don’t suppose you have any guidance for us poor dumb men folk?”

 

Leni brushed her hands across her apron and stood.

 

“As a matter of fact. I do.”

 

****

 

Billy learned to swim at the age of three, but Yeo-reum hadn’t been there. Ships didn’t repair themselves, fish didn’t enter nets all on their own, and merchant ships don’t just hand over their goods without a little muscle involved. She’d been busy. Instead the cook, a tall, beefy woman named Lihua with arms the size of tree trunks and a wonderfully large belly had taken charge of him for the day. She’d rowed the two of them onto a far island where she replenished their stock of medicinal plants, and found a lagoon.

 

“I’m going to teach you to swim.”

 

“Swim? Swim like a fish?”

 

Billy remembered flashes of the day. The burning sand under his bare feet, and the shift of the wind through the trees. How the further inland they traveled the quieter the ocean became, and how that sent nervous flutterings through his stomach even as the sound of cannon fire grew quieter along with it.

 

He didn’t remember that he’d put his small hands together and wiggled them through the air when he’d asked Lihua about swimming or that Lihua, who wasn’t much for laughing, had chuckled and agreed, but he’d heard this part so many times that like Yeo-reum’s stories about his mother he had a clear and working picture in his memory.

 

He mostly remembered how later she’d walked into the lagoon with him balanced on her hip. Letting him cling to her neck until he was used to the strange new water, and how she hadn’t let go of him until he’d asked.

 

“Yes, you’ll be a little fish in the water by the end of today.”

 

The name Lihua gave him that day stuck, and until the day he walked down a gang plank as a grown man and adopted the name ‘Billy Rocks” Little Fish was who he was.

 

If there was a story behind the name Yeo-reum gave Billy she never shared it. He knew his mother hadn’t picked it, if she had Yeo-reum would have thrown a fit at the change. The non-committal shrug, and insistence that it ‘just seemed like a good name to give you’ sometimes made him suspect that his father had chosen the name, but it was a theory he dismissed just as soon as it appeared.

 

****

 

“I have to admit. I’m surprised to hear that Mr. Robicheaux got the honor of naming her.”

 

Teddy Q was irritatingly good with Hermia. Stupid, soft, Teddy Q who Billy dined to hold his daughter because Emma would get cross with him if he didn’t, and only because Teddy hadn’t managed to transfer any of his stupid, softness onto her any of the other times he’d held her. That and Goodnight was right next to him in case he did something ridiculous like drop her or get shot again.

 

“The name of my very favorite Shakespearian heroine!”

 

Teddy was nodding like he understood exactly what Goodnight was talking about, and Billy did not roll his eyes because Helen was clutching his leg, and waving her stuffed calico rabbit at him which meant he was supposed to kiss its head. Helen had recently started playing doctor, and come to the conclusion that all medicinal hurts should be topped off with a kiss to the head.

 

“It is a very...pretty name.”

 

The pause was something Billy’s ear had started to pick up. From the new sherif, the grocer, the blacksmith, the church ladies, and any of their surviving husbands. What Teddy really meant was that it was a _grand_ name. A little too grand actually, and it made Billy’s hackles go up because even if Teddy didn’t mean it Billy’s mind tacked “especially for this particular girl child of _questionable_ parentage” at the end, and how _dare_ Teddy. Who did Teddy think he was anyway?

 

“ _So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,/ Ere I will my virgin patent up/Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke/My soul consents not to give sovereignty_.”

 

Billy bent down to give the rabbit’s ear a quick peck,not for the first time wishing he’d actually read A Midsummer Night’s Dream before agreeing to Goody’s choice, and then motioned toward the back of the house. He needed to remove himself before he did something that would have Emma knocking on the door of his and Goodnight’s room to demand an apology for Teddy Q’s broken nose, and then an intervention by Ms Leni when Billy refused and Emma’s temper roared to life.

 

“You two start supper. I’ll see if the ladies need a hand.”

 

Laundry had been seen stung up to dry that morning, but the fat, black clouds rolling in from the East promised rain that night, and Emma had pulled Leni away from the group to collect their sheets, pants, nights shirts and socks. Billy tripped over the empty laundry basket as he turned the corner, and the fall sent him to his knees. The angle gave him an excellent view of what Ms Leni and Emma had gotten up to while he’d been on the porch.

 

Leni was on her back, arms held high over her head, and hanging onto two incredibly strong tufts of grass as she squirmed. Her skirts were rucked up around her waist, drawers tangled in her ankles, and Emma’s face was buried between woman’s thighs. The wind that had been whistling past Billy’s ears and across his hot face died away, and one of the long flapping white sheets dropped to hid the women from view. Then the wind was back, and lifting the sheet into the air as though it were a curtain in a play house.

 

Emma’s head was up now,her face wet, and mouth grinning. A smile full of delight and pride at the sight underneath her, and Billy realized that if he didn’t move and move quickly he’d be the reason that smile disappeared.

 

Goodnight and Helen were putting vegetables into the bubbling stew pot, and Teddy was carefully slicing bread with Hermia balanced on his lap when Billy banged into the house. 

 

“Where are the ladies?”

 

Billy scooped his daughter off of Teddy’s lap his cheeks as red as poppy blossoms.

 

“None of your business.”

 

****

At fourteen Billy was broody, snappish and full of so much anger sometimes he could feel it vibrating out of his skin.

 

The crew stood for none of it.

 

He tried to pick a fight with the navigator, and she sent him off to tie knots until he cooled down. He insulted the taste of dinner, and Lihua refused to serve him breakfast. He snapped at the cabin boy, a runaway from some incredibly hot island Billy hoped to never see again, and Yeo-reum put knives in his hands, and told him to throw until his aim impressed her (It never did. At least not in the early days).

 

His teenage tantrums came to a head the day he turned his vitriol on the captain. She’d been a short woman with the same face shape as Billy and Yeo-reum, the same accent-less Korean, but with skin as dark as a moonless night and a history Billy never got to hear. He’d barely gotten the full insult out of his mouth before she’d flipped him over the rail and into the sea.

 

When he swam back, now broody, snappish and full of sea water the captain stopped him before he could set one foot onto the deck.

 

“If you insist on acting like a child, Little Fish I’ll see that you spend so much time in the ocean the seals will start to think you’re one of their lost pups. With all that barking you’ve been doing they just might get confused enough to take you in. Do you understand?”

 

He’d understood. He’d even apologized, but he’d never learned to really control his temper on the sea. It took time on the land to beat that into him.

 

****

 

“She’s going to be a terror. A regular terror.”

 

Billy made a rude sound at Emma’s proclamation, and took another swig from Goody’s flask. He’d had enough that the liquor no longer burned its way down his throat, and his head felt pleasantly light all while his body felt pleasantly heavy. Goody plucked the flask out of his fingers, and took a drink of his own.

 

“No, no. She’ll be a perfect little lady. Un petite belle.”

 

Billy and Emma made identical rude noises.

 

“Well, we know which one of us she’ll like best when she turns fourteen, and thinks her mother is Lucifer himself.”

 

Goodnight positively beamed at that idea.

 

“Do you really think so?”

 

Leni had offered to watch the children while the three of them made the visit to Mathew’s grave. Emma had almost quarreled with her over leaving her at the cabin, but Leni had been firm.

 

“Someone needs to watch the little ones while you explain the insanity and joy that our lives have become. You and I will pay him and my poor Caleb a visit this Sunday. It’ll be good for the townsfolk to see us together like that. It’ll quiet a few wagging tongues.”

 

The grass in the Rose Creek cemetery was dry under Billy’s hands, and his boots were only a few dangerous inches away from the apple he’d left for Mathew.

 

Emma had been curious about the gift he’d set next to Goodnight’s flowers, and Billy’d found himself suddenly tongue tied at the idea of explaining. How this was a tradition of his home country. How Yeo-reum had brought him to the island where she’d buried his mother several times to leave offerings of liquor and food, but how he couldn’t be trusted as the only source of all things involving Korea because his real home country had been a ship on the ocean populated by a mismatched group of runaways and criminals first, and a land mass holding thousands of years worth of history second.

 

It wasn’t the first time he’d had this realization, but it was the first time the idea had concerned him. What would he tell Hermia when she was old enough to ask? What would he say when she eventually asked something he was ignorant of?Even worse, what if she never wanted to know?

 

He took the flask back from Goodnight, and grumbled when he found it empty. 

 

“She can’t be a terror because I was a terror, and I think it’s supposed to skip a generation.”

Emma’s laugh wasn’t bright or bubbly, but it was real and her teeth flashed white in the moonlight when the turned to look at Billy.

 

“I assure you. That is a lie.”

 

****

 

The aftermath of his first real battle left Billy (Or Little Fish as he was still being called) with his head hanging over the rail as he vomited again, and again, and again.

 

“It was you or them, Little Fish.”

 

Yeo-reum rubbed gentle circles on his back, and the motion caused his blood and sweat stained shirt to ruck up, and expose the bruises and scratches he’d earned when the sailor he’d stabbed had collapsed on him as he died. He was fifteen and a man, and he shouldn’t need such comforts, but he was too busy sending vomit into the sea to complain.

 

“If you had been slower that man would have shoved his dagger into your guts, and then stomped you to death on the deck.”

 

Billy spat out his last mouthful of bile, but his limbs were heavy and moving away from the rail, away from anything but the sight of the clean, blue-green sea under his eyes especially to look at the carnage behind him was too much for him. So he didn’t move.

 

“When you kill a person for the first time you wound yourself a well. It’s not a pleasant feeling. But all wounds scab over and scar eventually. You kept yourself alive, and you helped keep other members of the crew alive. That is what I want you to focus on.”

 

So he did, and eventually he discovered that Yeo-reum was right. The pain of it all scarred over. He never enjoyed killing, not the first time or the fiftieth, but he was practical enough to know that when it was needed it was needed. It wasn’t until he met Goodnight that he saw how in some people that particular injury didn’t heal, just festered. Rotting away at the souls who’d sustained it.

 

Not everyone was built the way he was.

 

****

Hermia was just starting to toddle around on her own when Billy turned a corner, and found Yeo-reum at the farm. She held a squirming Hermia balanced on her hip, and her pistol was rock steady in her free hand. The pistol was pointed directly at Emma, though too be fair, Emma’s shotgun was pointed directly at Yeo-reum. Hermia was fine, curiously chewing on one of Yeo-reum’s long black and silver braids, but Billy could see disaster on the horizon.

 

Yeo-reum could kill Emma in a blink, but Emma would make her pay for it. Maybe send some lead into the older woman’s shoulder. Maybe shoot her in the belly where she’d bleed out on the grass.

 

Yeo-reum’s face as cold as winter frost, her brown eyes sharp as broken glass, while Emma was coiled as tight as a wildcat with prey in her sights. If Billy startled either of them he might be the one who ended up with a bullet in his body, and dying after all the Rose Creek drama was too irritating to even contemplate.

 

Billy was reaching for his own gun, to do what with he still hadn’t decided, when Hermia caught sight of him. With an excited, ear drum shattering screech she waved her chubby arms at him, and said her very first word right into Yeo-reum’s ear.

 

“Dada!”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -If I have made any grave errors in regards to other’s cultures please feel free to sing out Louise. 
> 
> -....... I should probably introduce a pirate from Billy’s childhood who looks suspiciously like Xena.

**Author's Note:**

> -Yes, I killed Billy's mom. Just call me Walt Disney. 
> 
> -I told myself for months and months that this would get more...and I think it might get one more chapter, but for now this is all there is. 
> 
> -Thank you to Villa-Kulla for her help with Korean names. If there's any fucks ups on that part they're all mine. 
> 
> -As I do not have any children I have no great declarations to make about parenthood in this.


End file.
